How does a fee receivable become Paid?

The shortest way to understand collections is to know the states of an invoice. An invoice is born as a Draft, reaches the client as Sent and becomes Paid once the payment is verified. The payment process is a separate record inside that picture: Pending, Under review, Successful or Failed.

The map has one hard rule: an invoice becomes Paid only through a verified payment callback. A failed attempt does not close the invoice; it stays unpaid, and if the due date passes the system marks it Overdue.

Payment states belong to the payment record. The invoice becomes Paid only when the payment is verified and Completed; Overdue appears when the due date passes and Cancelled when the invoice is voided.

Invoices

Invoice F-2026-0042 · Client A

Draft

Case preparation and pleading

₺8,000

Hearing follow-up

₺2,500

Subtotal

₺10,500

VAT (20%, example)

₺2,100

Grand total

₺12,600

Payment records

Attempt 1₺12,600

Attempt 2₺12,600

Collected

₺0

Collection rate

0%

1. 01/06
   A draft is preparedTwo lines are entered: ₺8,000 for case preparation and filings, ₺2,500 for hearing follow-up. The system computes the subtotal, VAT and total. Status is Draft; the client sees nothing yet.
2. 02/06
   The invoice is sentAn invoice number is assigned automatically and the due date is set. Status becomes Sent; the invoice is now open for collection.
3. 03/06
   The client moves to paymentThe lawyer chooses Collect payment online on the invoice; the client is sent to the secure payment page and enters the card there. The payment record becomes Pending; the invoice is still Sent and unpaid.
4. 04/06
   One attempt failsIn the example the card limit is insufficient. The payment becomes Failed and the invoice stays unpaid. It is not Overdue either, because the due date has not passed; it is simply not collected.
5. 05/06
   A new attempt startsThe client pays by credit card again from the same invoice; a new payment record opens as Pending. The amount does not change: ₺12,600.
6. 06/06
   The payment completesOnce the payment provider's result is verified, the payment is Completed and the invoice is Paid; a paid invoice can no longer be edited. The ₺12,600 collected feeds the collection rate and the dashboard.

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01/06

A draft is prepared

Sample invoice; the client, amount and number are fictional. In the example the collection rate covers this invoice only.

Collection starts once the fee itself is settled. Article 163 of the Attorneyship Law (Law No. 1136) (opens in a new tab) says the attorney-client agreement is freely arranged, so fixed, hourly, staged and success-based fees all sit within that freedom. The same article provides that agreements not made in writing are proven under the general rules: an orally agreed fee may later be hard to prove, and that can cause trouble in a dispute.

Article 164 of the same law (opens in a new tab) sets two limits. A fee may be agreed as a percentage, but not above twenty-five percent of the value of the case or of what is awarded, and a fee below the minimum attorney fee tariff cannot be agreed. Building the agreement around these two limits closes off a point that would otherwise be argued at collection time.

Online payment does not replace this ground; it is its payment side. If the agreement states the fee, VAT, due date and who bears expenses, the invoice is the mechanical result. In HukukBis the billing module carries time entries and expenses onto the invoice, and the time tracking and billing guide covers that part in detail.

The invoice is the record through which a fee receivable enters the payment system. If its amount is wrong, reconciliation breaks even when the payment flow works. In HukukBis an invoice is made of lines, each line is calculated with KDV (Turkish VAT), the number follows the rules your firm sets, and the document can be sent to the Revenue Administration (GİB) as an e-invoice or e-archive document.

The order of calculation never changes: the lines add up to the subtotal, VAT is computed on the subtotal, and the total is the sum of both. The compass beside this section shows a two-line example. The rate is an example; confirm the current VAT rate and the document type with your accountant.

Keep expenses (court fees, notification costs, expert advances) as separate lines from the fee. The tax treatment of an expense can differ from that of a fee, so ask your accountant about that too. A separate line lets the client see exactly what is being paid and lets you read fees and expenses apart.

The due date is the last day the client has to pay, and it is set when the invoice is sent. For the system it is the trigger of the automatic Overdue status: once the due date passes, the invoice becomes Overdue on its own and nobody has to flag it by hand.

Write the policy into the agreement and keep it simple. One default due period, no due period for fees taken up front, and staged invoices for long matters cover most situations. Every exception is something someone has to track manually.

The longer the due period, the later the Overdue signal arrives. That is a choice, not a rule; watch the period you picked in the collection-rate report and change it if needed.

From the client's side a good payment needs three things: seeing what they pay and how much, entering the card on a screen they trust, and getting a confirmation at the end. In HukukBis the payment is taken in the iyzico (opens in a new tab) payment form (Checkout Form), a Turkish payment provider; the client opens the form from the link tied to the invoice and enters the card there.

Before sending the link, check the amount, the name on the invoice and the due date; the client will compare the figure on the link with the figure on the invoice. When you send the link by email or message, add one short sentence: what the amount is for, the last payment day and whom to write to with questions.

After payment the client should receive a confirmation. HukukBis generates a notification when the payment completes; in-app, email, SMS, WhatsApp and push channels are managed in the notifications module. For the payment provider connection, see the integrations page.

Card number, expiry date and security code never reach HukukBis and are not stored in HukukBis; they are processed in the iyzico payment form. The firm's system only receives the outcome: which invoice, which status.

This split makes data protection easier but does not remove responsibility. Article 12 of KVKK (opens in a new tab) (Turkey's Personal Data Protection Law, No. 6698) requires the data controller to take the technical and organisational measures needed to keep personal data secure. Never seeing the card is a meaningful measure toward that duty: data you do not hold cannot leak.

What remains is the client name, the invoice amount and the payment status; access to it depends on permissions and actions are logged. The outcome also arrives over a secure path: iyzico reports it with an HTTPS callback, the callback is signed, and the system does not change the invoice before verifying the signature. For wider measures, see the security page.

Not every payment attempt succeeds. Insufficient limit, an unfinished bank verification, a card closed to online use or a client closing the form are common causes. In that case the payment record becomes Failed. Pending and Under review are interim states: do not have the client pay a second time before the result is clear.

The rule is simple: only a verified payment callback makes the invoice Paid. A failed attempt does not close the invoice; it stays unpaid, and if the due date passes the system marks it Overdue. A failed payment therefore creates no clean-up work for the firm, but it does call for follow-up.

In practice, send the client a short message the same day, do not guess the cause, say the payment was not completed and, because the invoice is still unpaid, that they can try again. If several attempts bring no result, suggest an alternative such as a bank transfer.

The two ways to pay the same invoice are compared row by row. A bank transfer or EFT is the alternative route when a card payment does not go through.

An invoice past its due date moves to Overdue by itself. The practical value is that lateness does not depend on someone remembering: lists and reports show late receivables with the same definition every day.

Overdue is only a label; you still manage the client relationship. The first step is to resend the same invoice link with a courteous message. Keep the tone free of blame, repeat the amount and due date, and include a link that pays in one click.

If your agreement contains late-payment interest or a similar clause, weigh your client relationship and your fee agreement together before applying it; that decision is yours, not the system's. When lateness repeats, rethinking the due period, taking more up front or invoicing in stages is often more productive than penalising.

Clients often want to pay a fee in parts, and there are two separate ways to do that which should not be confused. The first is staged billing, a decision your firm makes: you split the fee into stages in the agreement and issue a separate invoice for each. Because each invoice carries its own status, this method stays clean in reconciliation.

The second is card instalments. Which cards offer instalments, for how many months and who bears the commission all depend on the iyzico contract terms; this guide gives no figures. If you plan instalments, read your agreement and the iyzico terms together.

Partial payment, collecting only a part of an invoice, calls for the same approach: how far it is supported on the provider side depends on your iyzico contract, and the cleanest path for reconciliation is to split the invoice into stages. Until an invoice is Paid, its full amount is tracked as an open receivable.

The collection rate is a simple division: the amount collected over the amount invoiced. What matters is that both sides count the same set: the same period, the same VAT base, cancelled invoices excluded. A cancelled invoice stays Cancelled; keep it out of the rate.

In the example beside this section a month has four invoices with a VAT-inclusive total of ₺36,000. Three are paid and one is Overdue. Collected is ₺31,200, so the rate is about 86.7 percent. Check the same figure against the Overdue list: 36,000 − 4,800 = 31,200.

A second reconciliation check is that the payment provider's records match the Paid invoices in HukukBis. Every Successful payment should have a Paid invoice behind it; if one does not, inspect the callback record. For how the rate appears in reports, see the reporting module.

At every stage of a payment the client wants to know what is happening. Three messages are enough: the invoice link, a reminder as the due date approaches and the payment-completed confirmation. HukukBis generates the third itself once the payment is verified; you send the first two.

Choose the channel by the client's preference. Write down beforehand which content goes through which channel, and send the payment link only to the channel the client gave you. The notifications module lets you manage channels in one place.

Do not ask for or write card details, an ID number or case specifics in the message. The duty of confidentiality under Article 36 of the Attorneyship Law (opens in a new tab) applies to payment messages too: even saying service fee instead of naming the case lowers the risk of a message reaching the wrong person.

Online payment works through habit more than through tooling. The routine below is kept simple enough for a small firm to repeat monthly and can be scaled to a law firm of any size.

At the start of the month read last month's collection rate and open the Overdue list; write an owner and a next-step date against every late invoice. Mid-month, remind clients whose due dates are close. At month-end reconcile against the payment provider's records and either send or delete the invoices still waiting in Draft.

The rhythm comes down to three questions: was every invoice that should have been issued issued, was every sent invoice paid, and is the next step written down for every unpaid one? If the answers are not on paper, collection is left to chance. The online payments module runs the payment side; the discipline is in your calendar.